So Close by Marc Masclans: Article in the Spanish Team Forum about the creation of Marc's diorama, considered by many the best entry in Golden Demon Spain 2012. The name he chose for the diorama was totally premonitory...

Monday, July 30, 2012

Today I show you another WIP, one which has been kept hidden for a very long time. I started this conversion in December 2010. At the time, I was painting the High Elves Sea Guard, so I was in the middle of one of my deepest motivation spikes for my High Elves army. Remember my High Elf Army project? Check it out so far:

This new WIP was left aside just a month after I started it, so this miniature has been kept stored since then, away from the sunlight, patiently waiting its turn... until now, when I have decided to get back with old WIPs. This is a very ambitious project, and will be one of the central pieces of my High Elves. Let's get started!

Before we start let me say something... I LOVE DRAGONS. I've always loved those creatures. They are simply AWESOME. But Games Workshop has never released any dragon kit that deserved any pride on their part. Since the dragons of the old Fantasy editions, terribly awful, one after another they just released clones of the same horrible miniature. However, a few years ago, GW decided to release a new plastic dragon kit which could have been a new beginning on their relationship with the creature. It was a good kit, I can't say the contrary, but it had the same flaws which you can find in 90% of Games Workshop miniatures. If you assemble it right out of the box you get a nice miniature, not very fancy, but OK for gaming purposes. And this is not enough. So here's me trying to get something interesting out of this kit.

The first thing I realised when I saw the plastic dragon, was that the jaw made no sense. The lower jaw was considerably smaller than the upper one. This gives the dragon a weird look, and one of the most important parts of a dragon is the head, it can give the creature all the awesomeness just by itself. Even so, the head in this kit really has a lot of potential and doesn't need too much work. Fortunately, the GW kit comes with two heads, with and withour armour. So I took the lower jaw of the armoured one, and the head of the other one.

Now it does look awesome enough!

Now that I have a cool head to start with, let's see what we can get out of the body. The whole torso comes in two pieces, but this only enables the rigid pose that the boxart shows. I'll cut so I can develop poses a little more.

The same happens with the neck. It is very rigid and straight, really boring stuff. There's nothing really to get out of it, so I'll just use wire and once I'm happy with the pose, I'll model it from scratch. Shouldn't be too difficult!

Wires give you a lot of field to work with. The arms are also really horrible. I'll make larger arms with wire, and attach them to the torso which has also wire to be able to twist the lizard.

I thought it would be cool if the dragon was climbing a rock instead of flying, and once it reached the top, the head moved forward in an intimidating and epic pose. So let's go with that for now. I built a simple rock where the dragon would lean on out of the actual base in the kit and some spare Magic Sculpt putty I had at home which was about to go bad soon.

It has potential! Let's put on some more pieces to see how it looks, the wings and the throne backrest. Obviously, the wings are very important, they are about 70% of the whole miniature, so no way I'm going to put them like the kit encourages you to. So LAME!

So yes... I'm starting to feel it! It really looks cool. I'm pretty convinced with the pose, it is very straightforward. So before I continue, I'll put putty on the wires to fix it for now and keep on progressing from there.

I also added the right leg from the kit, looks like I will be able to use that one, and also some wire for the tail. I think it would be very cool if the tail was wrapped around the rock, and the tails that come with the kit are really dull too, so I'll sculpt that. I don't need putty there, I can leave that for a later stage as it won't affect the whole miniature.

Monday, July 9, 2012

I'm going to start painting this amazing piece, one which I fell in love with the time I saw it. My good friend Piti gave it to me and now I will start painting it as I promised him.

You may be wondering why I like this miniature so much. Well, for starters, because it's absolutely brilliant. To continue, because it's Boromir, and you just have to take a look at my nickname to understand that there is a special love for this character. To illustrate this better, I'll show you this photo taken at the end of 2001...

I guess you can understand it better now, don't you? XD Yes... at that time, I had just turned 16, and those fabulous movies where aired for the first time, and a group of friends decided to be super nerdy (something which if you think right now is geeky, imagine 10 years ago) and we went to see the movies with these outfits. Please do not miss my super cute sixteen year old face...

Is there anyone in this room free of sin? :) So after showing my deepest secrets, it's time to start! ;)

These are all the pieces on the table, just out of the box.

After cleaning mould lines and polishing with steel wool (god I hate that shit...)

A super fun bath with soap and water to get the dirt off.

And time to dry! This one's a classic now. Drying in my towel! haha

I begin building up. First glue the left leg, drilling and pinning, and covering the gaps with putty.

Making sure the miniature fits well together is not easy, I have to sand off some of the fits to make it all match.

This one I nearly destroyed entirely.

The key here is in the left arm, the left leg and the clothes of the back part. If all of this fits, we got it.

This is all I have glued before painting. The rest of the pieces will be painted separately for better comfort (shield, head, horn, sword and sheath.

And this is how it looks like once its all glued together (the pieces I want to leave loose are just put together with some blu tack to see how they fit together). I love this model!

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Some days have passed since the contest and we are starting to see lots of photos, comments of all type, and I promised you all a good post about the event. Well here it is! First of all, a good compilation of photos taken from different blogs and forums (spanish-team, chupapinceles...), with the winners and the not-so-winners of the event:

Gold in Single 40k. No words...

Silver in Single 40k. Elías Alonso.

Bronze in Single 40k. Cristian Hardy. Deserved better!

Gold in 40k Squad. Michael Delacroix.

Silver in 40k Squad. Jaume Tugas.

Bronze in 40k Squad.

Gold in 40k Monster. Elías Alonso.

Silver in 40k Monster. Jaume Tugas.

Bronze in 40k Monster.

Gold in Vehicle. Manuel del Toro.

Silver in Vehicle.

Bronze in Vehicle.

Gold in Single Fantasy. I've got exactly the same conversion made!

Silver in Single Fantasy. Rubén Pérez Alonso.

Bronze in Single Fantasy. Julien Casses.

Gold in Fantasy Unit.

Silver in Fantasy Unit.

Bronze in Fantasy Unit.

Gold in Fantasy Monster. Christopher Octive.

Silver in Fantasy Monster. Fabrizio Russo.

Bronze in Fantasy Monster.

Gold in Lord of the Rings.

Silver in Lord of the Rings. Julien Casses.

Bronze in Lord of the Rings. Aitor Molero.

Gold and SLAYERSWORD in Diorama. Pablo López Jimero.

Silver in Diorama. Marc Masclans. My favourite!

Bronze in Diorama.

Gold in Duel.

Silver in Duel.

Bronze in Duel.

Gold in Open. Alfonso Giraldes.

Silver in Open. Matteo Murelli.

Bronze in Open. Manuel del Toro. An authorized copy of my ork! :)

And after the winners, here are nearly all the rest of the miniatures which entered competition in Golden Demon Spain 2012.

Bronze in Open. Manuel del Toro. An authorized copy of my ork! :)

This is my Imperial Fist of which I will share better photos soon.

Eldar by Beren.

Luis Gómez Pradal.

By Rosman.

Matteo Murelli.

Diego Esteban

Borja García (fenix).

Arsenus Kaligar.

Funny diorama by Luis Alonso.

Slayer Dwarf in 54 mm by Fabrizio Russo.

Playing with perspective by Arkira.

José María Arnáiz (Piti).

Modelled by Pablo Ronda and painted by Beren.

Judging the photos now you can get a better idea of the event. The level and quantity of miniatures was much less than the past year. Changing its location to Barcelona has resulted in more foreigners coming to the event, but also many spaniards decided not to come because of that. The very sad thing was comparing the Barcelona event to the ones held in the same location a few years ago, comparisons are really bad. Regarding decisions, well I guess nothing suprising, we are used to this. Many decisions I just can't understand. Personally I think that the category in which this weird criterion to decide winners has been the most obvious is Single 40k. The awards in that category simply make no sense and everyone was very surprised about it. And about the sword... in my opinion the best miniature of the contest was Marc Masclan's giant diorama because it was the best in all aspects (except the commercial one for GW I guess). The Slayersword to Paloji is also very much deserved, of course, he made a very good diorama with tons of work put on it, but I personally would have given it to Marc. Anyway, big congratulations to Pablo López (paloji) for his amazing Slayersword!! He deserves it very much. Many years he has been the one losing because of bad luck and decisions, and now luck was with him!

All in all, the best of the weekend by far was the dinner the day before the event. Possibly the best painter's dinner that I have ever attended. You can't miss it next year!